We went, a grim procession to the river, guarded by a host of flying lights, the soldiers holding my hair like a bridal train. Again, I remembered his lips and the precious stones on my back and the river in my pelvis and his lemon grass fish swimming into it from the belly of a dead girl now growing her face and nipples back, and her grandmother rubbing her feet as if trying to remember something, and the soft mound of earth singing the ten-year-old bones to sleep.
Thus the betrayal of memory, while the soldiers marvelled at how my hair grew and grew in their hands. They were in on the secret now. They knew that, once I dived into the waters sweet with lemon grass, I would never leave my heart on the bank again.
Colours
Imagine a half-note about to drop from its stem. Imagine this departure from the possibility of song. This is how to fall out of love before it has even been declared. And then we leave, knowing we will never be called back.
She is all wept out now and I am depleted, but she will never know this. For a long time, my love for Maria was like an unfinished clef, a composition only about to begin, or merely a half-wish to begin. No, it was never put out there, not written as a score, and will never be played. I can’t even say it was just a tune in my head. It was more of an inkling in my eyes, behind the sockets where I sensed a musical wish each time I saw her.
Her husband was a sallow man, very fine boned, ash-blond and reserved, an inward man. She was the opposite, dusky and robust, her manner always geared towards the superlative. She moved with an impetuous energy which echoed her choice of colours, sometimes a red bandanna on her hair, a garish yellow blouse or huge, blue earrings.
It must have been the red which made my eyes throb the first time I saw her. Maria was fashioning it like an exotic turban around her hair, but couldn’t quite gather the stubborn tresses. The threat of a Southerly, and her on the roof—what was she doing there? Black hair and red bandanna struggled to fly from her head which was defiantly tilted back, lips parted as though she were drinking up the incoming storm. I stared for a long time, perhaps the first and last time I would see the precise contours of her face, and felt rather lost when she went back into the house.
At my fourth floor window I had to rest my eyes. A sharp contraction, no, a flush, a tingling. Eyes about to sing? My doctor looked at me strangely when I described the sensation. You’re a very special case, he said. He dared not use the word “strange”. Then he hypothesised about my condition. Bright colours might seem intense later on, only because of the growing blur around, but they might also hurt your eyes, so I suggest extra protection from any source of brightness, colours, harsh light, you know what I mean—and keep your window closed, he should have added.
Nowadays, I hardly open it. I stay away from that side of my flat which overlooks her roof and bedroom. I am all stared out, an ex-Peeping Tom, but without even a remnant of the eyes’ sexual bravado to show for it. Just a handful of colours pushed far beyond the sockets. Perhaps, a red—or a yellow?
It was the only brightness that afternoon. I was at the bus-stop and the yellow ran towards me. All was grey, what with the rain and the shadows camped in my eyes— but the yellow kept running clearly towards me. I nearly held out a hand to ward off this assault of colour.
“I know you. You live next door—and you stare too much.”
Nerves behind the eyes, literally. A tightening there. “That’s a pretty yellow. Cheerful.” I felt stupid saying that.
There was a touch of embarrassment in her laughter, or was it nervousness as I leaned closer?
“Yeah, cheerful and wet. Blasted rain.” She stepped back, just as her face was coming into focus.
I stared at the yellow instead, attempting to obliterate the grey. “Cheerful and wet…,” I echoed, the familiar sensation as if italicised on my sockets.
She hugged the yellow with her arms, protectively. “Sad, old perv,” she retorted and turned away. She thought I was ogling her breasts!
The bus saved me from the agony of composing an explanation. I didn’t board it. I was more than embarrassed. I had offended her.
Orphaned at the bus-stop under a heavy downpour and feeling diminished, and explaining to myself, eyes about to sing, eyes about to sing. My sockets were curved like notes that didn’t quite come full circle, and on their inadequate curvature, an urgent palpitation insinuated itself.
My doctor said I needed dark glasses for protection. I ignored his advice. I didn’t want the world to grow any darker. I wanted only to dream of yellow breasts. Perhaps, she was right about me being a sleazebag, but I couldn’t help it. The shapes, which I could no longer see clearly, became more defined in an inkling of song the hue of mangoes, daffodils, jonquils, all yellow staring back at me. The strange man from the fourth floor window honoured by a look, but never by any invitation to sing, because she had a husband and I was only a pair of disreputable eyes next door.
Consider the gaze under suspicion. Is it intrinsically perverted, or does it become perverse in the eyes of the beholder? After that yellow encounter, I began watching her bedroom window, and I was ashamed of myself, especially because the nights became unbearable. Behind my eyes, then bearing down on my chest and soon locked in my pelvis was an exquisite ripeness. I began to sleep naked.
The roof, the bus-stop, then finally my doorstep. How do I map out the progress of the gaze and everything unsaid about it, that which I cannot yet hold in contempt, because it’s still incomprehensible? Roof, bus-stop, doorstep coming to a head. Only three major occasions, but how my sightings of Maria developed and what eventually happened behind my sockets on the third encounter were undeniable. Unnotated, of course, not yet articulate like full knowledge, but true—I had fallen in love.
Such primary landmarks. Awe, desire, love. Red, yellow, blue.
Because she was so close, I saw that this blue was both dark and bright. Big, shiny plates of it. A blue armour on each ear, perhaps to guard it from hearing my urge to sing. That time, it was not a mere tremor, but an ache which a more able man could have transposed into the saddest concerto.
It was Christmas eve. She knocked on my door at about one a.m., wearing her unnaturally large, blue earrings, just as I was drifting off to another yellow sleep. She was crying. My husband, no one to help, the guests have left, come quickly, please, she begged.
Perhaps, blue is the colour of love.
In the ambulance, all the way to the hospital, when her tears were shifting into focus and blurring then shifting into focus again, I concentrated on the blue instead, hoping it would save me from that wretched yearning. She held his hand. I longed to hold hers, to hold her.
Blue is both bright and dark, the sky and the ocean; at the bottom, it’s almost black. Notate that vision for me, please, I could have asked her that, but I never had the chance nor the courage to sing. I could only stare.
A week later, she wore black. She hid the red, yellow and blue, rolled up the signposts in my little story, which she didn’t even know existed.
At the funeral, she laid a hand on my arm and murmured her thanks. I was sporting dark glasses and a cane for the first time. She asked whether I had hurt myself or something, then went off to receive more condolences.
I knew she wore an unrelieved black that day, but it no longer mattered. Behind my eyes, the light had been nearly switched off. Any bright colour would have been lost on me.
For a month or so, I tried to make contact, to catch her eye, what an absurd wish. But maybe she never went up the roof again, or she might have kept her bedroom blinds drawn forever, then gotten herself a car and never took the bus again. She could have even uprooted her house from the staring man’s vision, who knows, but it wouldn’t have mattered.
Nowadays, my window remains closed. Three years after the vision on the roof, the light is completely out, or so I thought, until the blur of her face sneaked into my room again, so I decided to tell this story, I hope you don’t mind. Yes, just last night, Maria up close, weeping in the ambu
lance. Tear on her lash—a half-note about to drop from its stem? Vaguely, I remember dismissing it as a limp metaphor before I drifted off to a sound, prosaic sleep.
Storm
I’m afraid, during the storm last night, a falling coconut frond pierced my heart and let the northwind in. It was so sudden. He had just begun snoring beside me, him limp and wet on my hip as he gripped my thighs with his long, hairy leg, when part of the roof and a coconut frond crashed on my bed. I thought I was unhurt, though shaking in terror by then. He kept on sleeping. He only shifted, changed his snore rhythm and gripped my thighs tighter.
He had been drinking hard, downing his usual tuba at the end of the table, while I cleared the supper which he did not touch. Amo said he had some lomi at Gloria’s house, so he wasn’t hungry. He had arrived soaking wet from the storm and in a mood more foul than the last time. The past nights after his engagement to Gloria, he came home looking grim and cursing under his breath heavy with tuba. He always returned with a bottle which he finished through supper. And during the meal, always the old question.
“Hoy, Viring, don’t I treat you well, pay you well?” His gruff voice punctuated the howling of the northwind among the coconut trees. I wondered about my mother and brothers back in Iraya. Must be flooded there again—
“Hoy, didn’t you hear me? I want you to tell me whether I treat you well?”
Amo was a generous master. When he first hired me to keep house for him, because he wanted Gloria to think he was rich enough to afford a maid, he gave my mother a thousand pesos as an advance for my first two months. On my fourteenth birthday, I made my first thousand—ay, was I proud! I kissed my mother and little brothers goodbye and promised to be good.
“Hoy, I’m talking to you!”
“Opo, Amo, you’re a good master.”
“And I always pay you on time, don’t I? DON’T I?” He had to raise his voice above a sudden gale which hissed through the slightly open window.
“On time, Amo.”
“Will you shut that window properly…the latch, DON’T FORGET THE LATCH…that’s better—I can hardly hear myself in my own house. Lintian, this storm is proving to be the devil himself!”
Ay, our poor village. I had felt the northwind on my breast while I closed that window. It seemed to pound its way through my heart. Amo is right, the storm is a bad one. After this, I’ll have to ask him for some advance pay again. Our hut will need a new roof and new wall, yes, the northern wall, of course—
“And how much is your salary?”
When the coconut trees keen like old women tearing at their hair, I can’t help but think of home…
“Ano ka, bungog? Hoy, Viring, I’m talking to you— you, deaf?”
“I’m sorry, Amo—what was it that you said?” I hurriedly began to clear the rice from the table. Have to finish soon. With this storm and with Amo in this mood, I’d rather be in bed.
“I asked how much I pay you,” his voice tailed me to the kitchen.
“Five hundred a month, Amo.”
“Come back here, will you? We’re having a proper conversation, girl. Hoy, come back, I said—CAN’T YOU HEAR ME?”
I rushed back in, but stood at the other end of the table, waiting for his next questions which I knew so well —the wind tormented the latch.
“Pay attention when I’m talking to you, ha? And you’re happy with that—that pay, I mean? And you promise to stay on and serve your mistress well after we get married?”
“Yes, Amo.”
“Yes what?”
“Yes, I’m happy and I promise to stay…”
“Now tell that to Gloria! Lintian, she’s probably having second thoughts about the wedding, because I told her she can’t bring her personal maid to my household! I have you, what more can she ask? Ay, that darkie of hers gets under my skin, she and her devotion to her mistress.”
The window shuddered from a blast of rain.
“Buli ni’na niya! This storm is driving me nuts! I bet you, Darkie’s hovering around her mistress again, probably in her bedroom—lintian, you never know what happens in a storm like this! Ah, she’s probably propping up her pillows or combing her hair—she combs her hair, can you believe—?”
The window seemed to sag inwards with the weight of the wind.
“You made sure of the latch, ha?”
“Yes, Amo.”
“And do you think it’s right for a maid to be too close to her mistress?”
“No, Amo.”
He used to rant about Gloria’s personal maid all the time. She never leaves her mistress, he’d say, and she’s always touching her, arranging her dress, doing her hair, or wiping her back, even in front of him. And her dark hand would linger on her mistress’ skin every time! I always got embarrassed when he talked this way.
“Like today. She would not leave us alone when we were having merienda. She pretended she was shooing the flies away or serving Gloria’s snack—buli ni’na niya, she was giving me the evil eye all the time, I know. I could not even touch my own nobya, or kiss her…I tried, but, imagine, Darkie screamed! She screamed— isn’t that mad, Viring? ISN’T THAT MAD?”
I attempted to escape to the kitchen with the plate of gingered fish, but he caught my arm. The latch rattled again and again, and the coconut trees keened even louder. I stared at the untouched fish and wondered what Mamay and the kids were having for supper.
“I’m asking you a question, girl!”
“Yes, Amo?”
“You’re a good maid, Viring, but you know what your problem is? You’re deaf. DEAF!”
“Sorry, Amo, sorry po.” I tried to head back to the kitchen, but his hand tightened around my arm. Outside, a coconut tree crashed to the ground.
“But at least you’re rather pretty and fair. Yes, you’ll look good beside your mistress—she’s so mestiza, you know, and seeing that darkie’s hand on her makes my blood boil!”
When Amo went to our village to look for a maid, he specified that he wanted a nice, fair-skinned, young girl, because he liked seeing a fresh and clean thing around the house. My mother smiled and proudly presented me to him. Ay, Mamay! She and the kids must be wading on knee-high water by now. Dios mio, how can they sleep then…?
“Yes, I like seeing a fresh and clean thing around the house. Sit, girl, sit.” He giggled and forced me to sit beside him. I nearly fell as he tugged me down. The gingered fish landed on my lap and the plate broke on the floor.
Then the lights went out.
“LINTIAN, BROWN-OUT AGAIN! LINTIAN!”
“Amo, Amo, if you…if you let me go, I can get some candles…”
“NO! Stay here, stay beside me. I like you close this way, in the dark,” he giggled again, making popping noises in his throat.
“Amo…the candles…I can get some, you know…”
“Did I tell you she’s as dark as a—as a brown-out?” He giggled even more and moved closer.
“Fish, fish, I caught a fish alive!” His other hand groped for the fish on my lap and stayed there. “Why is my Viring trembling so? You don’t like fish?”
“Amo, please,…let me clean up this mess…and some light…I must…please let me go…”
“Ah, I don’t need candles to know you’re nearly as white as my Gloria…even then, I don’t like your hand on your mistress, ha? You will serve me, then your mistress. I pay your five hundred, not your mistress, understand?”
“Yes, Amo, but, Amo, I have to clean up…please…”
“Viring,” he breathed hotly on my cheek. “I couldn’t even kiss my wife-to-be, because her maid screamed. Isn’t that crazy? But you don’t scream, do you? Do you?”
“Amo, please, please, no,…”
The latch rattled like a demented throat.
“You don’t like fish, so I’ll clean you up…” He locked an arm around my neck and removed the fish from my thigh. “Look what you’ve done. All the nice sauce on your thighs…sweet ginger, isn’t it…?” He snickered, rubbing the sau
ce on my lips.
Again and again, the wind blasted the window.
“No, Amo, please, Amo…ay, Madre de Dios!”
“I like thighs, you know, fresh and clean thighs… I’ve been wanting to do this…this and this…feel my Gloria’s white, white thighs,…but nothing escaped Darkie…nothing escaped that buli ni’na niya…that, that cunt of her mother!”
Nothing escaped me either, as I hunted for the coconut frond that pierced my heart and let the northwind in—my bruised breasts, the blood between my thighs, on his limp thing and all over my blanket… and more coconut fronds than I could ever imagine, peering down through that hole on the roof. Ay, how could anything escape me after it was over, when I saw it all a few hours ago? Even when I shut my eyes the whole time he grunted like a pig on top of me, I saw his face clearly, even his eyes. And I saw them in there, heard them even, rows and rows of coconut trees keening. His twenty hectares of old women, all tearing their hair in the wind.
Ay, Mamay of God, they screamed at me to get up, but I couldn’t! He was so heavy—and as strong as a crazed diablo. He kept on calling out Gloria’s name and cursing her maid at the same time, while he dug into me. I must have fainted, because I thought I felt the coconut trees lashing at me with their hair, howling with the wind, “Wake up, wake up!”
When I woke to the crashing roof, I knew my heart was wounded. And a coconut frond, an old woman’s strand of green hair, had done it! You have to believe me, because I saw the frond coated with my own blood and felt my chest nearly bursting, my heart billowing with the northwind. I knew, because the storm suddenly stopped outside. Because my heart had sucked it all in through its red mouth, a tiny hole the width of a coconut frond.
White Turtle Page 3